2 Timothy 4:6b-8a The time of my departure has come. I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith. From now on there is reserved for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, will give me on that day.
St Paul, nearing the end of his years of ministry, carefully and with great intensity writes words of encouragement and detailed instruction in two letters to his young colleague, Timothy. Here, near the end of his second letter, Paul foretells his rather imminent departure from this life.
How well I remember my first 'sign of aging'----when one day I realized that I was closer to 50 than to 21. (How many decades ago was THAT?)
But somehow, over these subsequent years, words of a much younger Paul, recorded in Romans 14:7-8, have often come to mind, helping to put youth and age into a marvelous kind of "divine perspective"--------
We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord; and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's.
God's GOOD NEWS doesn't get more all-encompassing than this. What more then can we say, but THANKS BE TO GOD!
Del Anderson
Visit http://www.allsaintspalatine.org for a full calendar. We will see you in worship for the First Sunday in Lent at 8:30 and 11. The Adult Forum this week kicks back into gear with a special conversation about the Pope and his resignation from a Lutheran perspective: during Education Hour at 9:45
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